Debian Administration

Recently, my focus of interest turned to volume management. Since with Linux, LVM2 seems to be the only viable solution (unless you go for cluster filesystems), I started reading about LVM. Somewhere, I read about setting up a loop device as PV and that's where I got intrigued: Couldn't I just use a sparse file with one single large hole and let my ext4 fill that when there's actually something written onto the loop device?

This article documents installing an encrypted openvpn server upon the Lenny release of Debian - read on for the motivation & documentation.

I just enabled HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) markers on a bunch of web servers that offer HTTPS.

So you're afraid of wearing out your SSD. Or you don't want to spin up a sleeping hard disk just to write a line of log. Or maybe you're just looking for some use for the disproportionate amount of RAM you've got. Whatever your case is, what you need is a way to keep the log files in memory as long as the system is up, and write them down to the regular storage just before shutdown.

The Monkeysphere Project aims to put authentication on the web back into the hands of web users through the use of the OpenPGP Web of Trust (WoT). Instead of purchasing certifications from the certificate authority cartel, or offering uncertified keys for services, admins can use the Monkeysphere tools to make OpenPGP certificates for their services, publish the certificates to the WoT, and then certify it themselves.

Due to a disk crash I've had to rebuild my Debian Lenny system. For some reason I can't get my cron-fired backup scripts to run. They will run manually.

I'm going to detail a process I've used recently at my work to install Debian on a computer already running Linux that was located hundreds of miles away from our location. The distance and cost of having a tech at the facility where the server was located necessitated using a method where we could install Debian without having anyone physically touch the machine.

Chances are if you have a digital camera writing images to a SDHC card, or some similar card, at some point you've accidentally deleted images from it. Here we're going to walk-through the process of retrieving deleted images from a card using the testdisk suite of tools.

The main goal is to get the Oracle installer to run so you can install Oracle successfully. This application has to run within X windows. We will use vnc for that, this is not necessary, but you may (often) find you have to install Oracle remotely. And using something like vnc sure beats spending time in a noisy server room.

Many articles tell us about about initial setup of IPv6 and are completely silent about what to do next. Thus, I wanted to share my own experience.